Saturday, February 20, 2016

Donald Trump,
after denouncing the Pope a few days ago, said that after he is elected
President he will vigorously defend the country and his Presidency from a
trash-talking Pope. If the Pope verbally attacks him again, the Pope will be
surpised when a few Marine Expeditionary Units assault the Vatican and seize
control of the city.

At a press
conference this morning, Trump said, “Once the Marine battalions seize control
of the city, we’ll see what
secrets the Vatican has been harboring for centruries and we’ll look into how they got all that art
work they have in the museum. Something doesn’t smell right.We’ll send in hundreds of accountants to
sniff it out and to see how much treasure the Church has.Then we’ll
force the Vatican to pay the costs for the Marine assault and occupancy of the
city.

If Italy objects to us sending Marines through
Italian territory, then Italy better look to its defenses also.

Under my Presidency, the USA will not be
insulted by a city posing as a country or even third-rate countries.”

Ms Conundrum will
monitor developments on this story.

Hank Quense is the author of 50 published short stories along with four novels and three collections of stories. All of these are humorous and/or satiric scifi and fantasy. In the non-fiction area, he has over a dozen articles published on fiction writing and he's the author of the Fiction Writing Guides series and the Self-publishing Guides series. Both series consist of a number of ebooks. The Fiction Writing Guides and the Self-Publishing Guides are an outgrowth of his lectures on both subjects.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Disclaimer: Before I answer this question I want to clearly state that AMAZON
IS ALWAYS CHANGING and therefore any information can be outdated or incorrect
the moment it is written.I just read,
for example, a newly published book (the author asked me for a review) in which
I found, to the best of my knowledge, a mistake about KDP ebook pricing.

Thus
this warning:No matter what anyone, including me, writes about online features for
social media sites, Amazon, or any sites, you should check for yourself whether
that information is accurate.

Now on to what is going on with Amazon at
this moment:

Error
issue:

It appears that as of February 2016 Amazon
will be putting a warning on Kindle ebook sales pages whose ebooks have some
mistakes such as spelling errors or formatting issues.In addition, ebooks with more serious issues
will be removed from the Amazon site until these are corrected.

Here is what you should know about taking
action into your own hands:

When you upload an ebook via the KDP
dashboard, there are two screens.The
first one includes the upload function for the book’s text.I do not believe that when you first upload a
new ebook you get the error message (although I may be wrong and you do get the
error message immediately).

But if you return to the ebook’s KDP upload
screens after the ebook has gone live, if there are spelling errors you will
see an error alert (scroll down on the first of the two screens).Do NOT overlook this alert as I admit I have
done in the past.In fact, return to the
KDP dashboard now and check all your ebooks.

If there are spelling errors, correct
these.If the words are correct, such as
in a fantasy story where you have made up words, you can tell KDP to ignore the
spelling error alert for these words.

Do this now to get ahead of this change in
KDP.And, if you are not the publisher
of your ebooks, ask your publisher to check the error alerts in the KDP
dashboard for your ebooks.

Preview
link:

On the plus side, KDP ebooks now have an
option on the book’s Kindle sales page for a link or embed code to the preview
of the book.

In other words, instead of sharing the
Amazon sales page link of your ebook and hoping the person will then click on
the book’s preview option, you can send someone directly to the preview.Or you can embed the preview on your own
website.

To find the link and embed codes for any Kindle ebook, scroll down on the right-hand side of a book’s Amazon sales page (make sure you are on the book’s Kindle sales page and not the physical book page) and to the right of the Pinterest icon you will find – click on this for both the link and embed codes and then choose which code you want.

Q:
Any suggestion of a site on which to share fiction or nonfiction material?

While I have written of other sites that I
have tried, Scriggler.com is the current free site with which I’m
experimenting.

Although the site’s interface is not as
user friendly as it could be, I’m finding Scriggler a very good site for
sharing both short stories and opinion pieces.(There’s also a poetry category.)

What I have found particularly interesting is that, about four days after
I post a new contribution, Scriggler promotes the story or article link via its
Twitter account of @IScriggle.

Now I can’t tell whether this is true for
all contributions.My theory is that
someone at Scriggler reviews the contributions before deciding which ones are
shared via Twitter.

Q:
Any suggestions for books on writing and courses on screenwriting?

I often read books on writing, and one that
I recently found very helpful is Jeff Gerke’s “The First 50 Pages: Engage Agents, Editors
and Readers, and Set Your Novel Up For Success.”As I
write this, the book has a 4.8 out of 5 rating on 46 reviews on Amazon, and I
think this rating is well deserved.(Full disclosure: I borrowed the Kindle ebook format from my local
library, although the book would be worth buying.)

Also, I
just finished the Maximum Entertainment online course from ScreenwritingU.com
and found it incredibly valuable.As
part of the homework assignments I rewrote several scenes from one of my
screenplays after learning how to make these scenes more dramatic.I am now signed up for a ScreenwritingU.com course
on dialogue.And, yes, these are paid
courses although quite reasonable.

Phyllis
Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and
nonfiction books on Amazon.She blogs on
book-related topics at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

*If you have a question you wanted answered in Ask PZM: March 2016, please forward it to cluculzwriter at yahoo dot ca and I'll pass it along*

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

It's that the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's Insecure Writer's Support Group. Thanks to our noble Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh, it's time to share our fears and insecurities, or support and assistance. Doesn't matter which. If you decide to join us, know that whatever you share will receive the upmost respect and attention. Click here to join. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.Our hashtag is #IWSG

In the still of the night, with your dreams fading, misery and doom weighing you down, do you see all hope as hopeless? Do you hear the banshee scream? During the darkest moment, is that when you choose death over life? You press the reset button, unconsciously aware that what you really want is to start over.

In life, JoAnn rose each day hesitantly and accomplished what many of us yearn for: a measure of success as an author. She dedicated her life to promoting authors of colour. Along the way, she hoped if she took her meds, some form of joy would kick in and allow her peace of mind.

Five years ago, JoAnn, a talented writer, university professor, and often difficult friend, chose to press the reset button. It's taken me this long to realize she wasn't a coward, nor was she courageous. The meds were slowly killing her creativity, bleeding her dry; no amount of desperation, screams for help, or willing her sanity to remain intact, worked. She wasn't getting better.

I didn't understand. I told her over and over again: "FIGHT! Be stubborn. Refuse to give up. Believe in yourself, in our friendship. Persevere--it'll get easier--I promise!" What I should have said was, "JoAnn, happiness is a decision you make every morning. If not today, then tomorrow."

Sometimes she'd call (I've lost track of how often) and mumble that she'd taken an overdose of meds. Then she'd pass out. I lived in British Columbia, Canada; she lived in Mesa, Arizona. Still, I'd always manage to contact the authorities and have someone show up at her door in time to get her to emergency where they could pump her stomach. One summer I even talked her into coming north to stay with us. I thought my sheer determination to save her -- would save her.

She stayed three months. On her way home, she detoured through Chicago on 9/11 to New York so she could help friends cope with the nightmare. It was while she was in NYC that she convinced her agent, the infamous Marie Brown, to sign me. The relationship never went anywhere; but for a time, I could say, "I have the same agent as JoAnn Hernandez, Ed Bradley, and Michael Jackson."

In 2010, JoAnn called from her studio in Mesa to say she'd taken an overdose of meds. I asked her not to call me again. I couldn't help her. If she wanted to die that badly, she should just do it.

So, she did.

Convinced of my ability to affect people, (have since learned otherwise) I believed it was my doing that caused her to take her own life. To compensate, I grieved and then moved on ... for five years.

If you google JoAnn's name, it doesn't tell you she was born August 2, had two sons, one adopted from Vietnam. It says: Honourable Mention, 2009 The Eric Hoffer Book Award -- Young Adult: Winner, 2007 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Americas Award, 1997....

It may tell you she wanted to put books by authors of colour in every bookstore in North America. She founded The BronzeWord for that purpose. Today it says she resides in Mesa, Arizona -- even though she's been dead five years. The exact day she died is unknown.

I don't know if there's enough words in the world to convince someone not to press the reset button. Nor if it's even the right thing to do. Is JoAnn at peace now? I can only hope. I do know there's a hole where her life used to be.

FIND ME

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I am Métis from Canada. I began my first novel in 1983 to honour my dad's memory. Today my husband and I live in the home we built with our own hands on Cluculz Lake. My first novel Dead Witness was a finalist in the 2012 Global eBook Awards. Suspense thriller Broken But Not Dead won the 2012 IPPY Silver Medal for Canada West. Mâtowak: Woman Who Cries was released November 1, 2016. Maski was released April 18, 2017. The audiobook version of Matowak is set for release June 2017. I provide editing services for writers and am currently applying final touches on a suspense thriller and a children's book.I spend my winters in Bucerias, Nayarit. If you want to talk writing or about life in general, contact me at cluculzwriter at yahoo dot ca. I'm always here.

Sequel to Maski

When Canada's retired Minister of National Defense, Leland Warner, is murdered in his home, the case is handed to Corporal Danny Killian, an aboriginal man tortured by his wife's unsolved murder.

The suspect, 60-year-old Sally Warner, still grieves for the loss of her two sons, dead in a suicide/murder eighteen months earlier. Confused and damaged, she sees in Corporal Killian a friend sympathetic to her grief and suffering and wants more than anything to trust him.

Danny finds himself with a difficult choice—indict his prime suspect, the dead minister's horribly abused wife or find a way to protect her and risk demotion. Or worse, transfer away from the scene of his wife’s murder and the guilt that haunts him...

Prequel to Matowak

Ebook

To the Breaking Point...

When Brendell Meshango resigns from her university professor position and retreats to her isolated cabin to repair her psyche, she is confronted by a masked intruder. His racial comments lead her to believe she is the solitary victim of a hate crime.

However, is all as it appears? After two bizarre days, the intruder mysteriously disappears but continues to play mind games with her. Taught by her mother to distrust the mainstream-based power structures, and with her stalker possibly linked to a high level of government, Brendell conceals the incident from the police. But will her silence keep her safe?

Then her beloved daughter, Zoë, is threatened and Brendell takes matters into her own hands. To save Zoë, Brendell searches for the stalker and confronts not just a depraved madman but her own fears and prejudices.

Rave review

... from the author of the Joanne Kilbourn series.

Joylene Butler’s protagonist, Professor Brendell Meshango, is a complex and uniquely Canadian character. She is a strong woman, but neither her Aboriginal childhood, her adult success as an academic, nor her fierce loyalty to her own child prepare her, or us, for the terror that strikes when she becomes the victim of a, seemingly random home invasion. The action in “Broken But Not Dead” is gripping; the characters are rich and the climax riveting.

-- Gail Bowen

New

Alexander Giston, 64 years old in 1966, invented a machine that broke time and allowed him to return to the past and save his wife and son from the train wreck that took their lives. They agreed to travel by airship instead, and were lost when the airship went down. After a third failed attempt to keep them from dying, Al promised himself he wouldn't again attempt to save his wife and son. Instead, he decided to go to the past to kill steam, the means of their death.

But some who live and prosper because of steam will to do anything to save their way of life, even to kill Al as often as they need to.Buy here

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Dead Witness

Dead Witness, a novel

Valerie McCormick is a wife and mother from small town Canada. While visiting Seattle, she becomes the only witness to the brutal seaside murder of two FBI agents. When she flees to the nearest police station to report the crime, she becomes caught up in a web of international intrigue and danger. Suddenly, she and her family are in the sights of ruthless criminals bent on preventing her from testifying against the murderer. Even with FBI protection, Valerie is not safe. Whisked away from her family and all that is familiar to her, Valerie fights back against the well intentioned FBI to ultimately take control over her life with every ounce of fury a mother can possess.
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